OPPENHEIMER

"You don't get to commit to sin and then ask all of us to feel sorry for you when there are consquences." - Kitty Oppenheimer

The cinematic monolith known as Christopher Nolan derives his filmography from the minds of troubled men.  Nolan gravitates towards a ‘don’t question it, just feel it’ approach regarding moral ambiguity through taut precision and bemused maximalism. His characters and the playscapes he entombs them in push the boundaries of moral absolutism. Robert J. Oppenheimer, known as ‘the father of the atomic bomb’, thus becomes Nolan’s ultimate muse. The remarkable coalescence of Oppenheimer parallels the historic measures in which its subject matter was conceived and created. An unstoppable force barrelling toward the inevitable, this scientific race wrought with moral burdens tampers with ruination of a physical sense as well as of the soul. 

The film molds its narrative around the perspective of Oppenheimer. Rather than convey events and regurgitate history, Nolan implements the human consciousness through the ghosts that brilliant men harbor in the name of ‘peace’ and ‘progress.’ Based on the book “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” the film balances the impact of the Greek Titan’s impact on civilization. By defying the Olympic Gods and stealing fire, Prometheus gifted it to mankind, bestowing upon them the treasure of technology, knowledge, and in turn, the fated components to destroy themselves. Nolan leans into the symbolism for the Titan of trickery and fire in his assessment of the sardonic plague of the human capacity for creation and destruction. 

Viewers follow Oppenheimer through years of tumultuous personal relationships, public scrutiny, and courtroom investigations during the Mccarthyism era. The spear-header of the Manhattan project in the desolate desert-lands of Los Alamos, New Mexico is tasked with creating a weapon of abhorrent magnitude and requires the collection of the world’s most brilliant scientists. Enduring decades long torment of his inevitable creative success, the progression of the atomic bomb and the aftermath of courtroom drama lead to accusations that blurred the lines between savior and murderer. Nolan frames the film in a smear of timelines that escalate into one conclusive admission of guilt. Oppenheimer transcends conceptual cinema in raw, emotional complexities and hair-raising storytelling, but falters in its overcrowded exposition and its demand for pace-breaking narrative literacy.

Oppie (nickname given by his inner circle and colleagues) embarks on his haunting journey as a young doctoral student at Cambridge. In between fit-full sleep and rustling, equation drenched papers, Oppenheimer dissociates in a blend of hallucinatory, atomic splitting visuals. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, accompanied by Ludwig Goransson’s breathtaking score, actualizes beautifully the tension-taut, nightmarish dance between dread and wonder inside Oppie’s mind. The film’s opening sequences leave little to criticize yet eventually ends with no emotional or mental reprieve. As a revolutionized filming technique, Nolan shot the entire film in 70 mm and was designed to be viewed in IMAX or Dolby Cinema. And though we are privy to Oppenheimer’s brilliant mind creating the  theory of splitting the atom in his early 20’s, the effectiveness of viewing the film in such high definition essentially dissipates after the first twenty minutes. 

For the rest of the three hour runtime, Oppenheimer can essentially be boiled down to a series of white men introducing each other so frequently you don’t remember their name or their role but acknowledge their importance because they said something smart for three minutes about forty-five minutes ago. The dialogue-saturated scenes force the viewer into a perpetual game of catch-up with four maddening steps. Step 1: Begin a scene with a random scientist that was introduced 30 minutes ago and spend 10 seconds trying to remember who he is. Step 2: Curse yourself for missing the first 10 seconds of the conversation because now you’re behind and trying to keep up for the rest of it even though 2 new random scientists are introduced (one being Rami Malek). Step 3: Curse yourself a second time because you should have paid attention in physics and don’t really know what they’re talking about anymore but Cillian Murphy looks like he is going to throw up so it must be serious. Step 4: Repeat for three hours. Between Oppenheimer’s marital affairs, the Manhattan project, and his trial regarding his communist ties, the script is a tour de force that demands unrelenting narrative literacy, and most of the time not in an admirable way. 

Among this cacophony of faces and scientific jargon exists a moral reckoning internalized by Oppenheimer and the United States. Central to the demons Oppie battles in his fruition of human destruction is the question of necessity. Nolan’s focus lands on the conscious actions of men and their moral interpretation of events. Because of this decision, the film leaves behind certain historical contexts, predominantly how imperative the bomb was in defeating the Japanese who have historically acknowledged surrender would have never been on the table otherwise. The film glosses over the aftermath of death and destruction in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Save for one admittedly harrowing scene in which Oppenheimer quakes amongst phantom bodies of burnt civilians, Nolan and the film itself omits any true portrayal of the devastation inflicted. We can argue the narrative design didn’t call for that and the brilliant performance of Murphy spoke enough to Oppie’s own regret and guilt such a creation posed on mankind. Does this deletion harbor an apologist ideal? While we can admit the brain behind the operation warred with himself throughout his life, a more direct criticism and visual portrayal honors a deeper acknowledgement of the whole, rather than the few. 

Cobbled with varying view-points, the film doesn’t claim allegiance of guilt or necessity, rather providing an objective, voyeuristic lens that confounds and surmises a lot of information. This information, caked with a plethora of opinions from several imperative characters close to Oppemheimer, lays bare more of who Oppenheimer was and how his personal tribulations affected history, as opposed to his scientific impact. His alcoholic wife Kitty, played by the enigmatic Emily Blunt, and his mistress Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) are two pillars in Oppie’s life that point to chaos. Tatlock, who essentially played a key role in pointing many government fingers in Oppie’s direction because of her connections to the communist party, took her own life. Kitty, though undeservedly loyal to her husband and a known alcoholic, influenced Oppenheimer in being one of the sounding-boards he truly trusted. By focusing on a certain character’s point of view, a new perspective may emerge. Changing or reinforcing your position is ever constant while Nolan embraces the choose-your-own-adventure mantra.  Because of the massive network of experiences and allegiances in Los Alamos, Nolan softly claims your interpretation of events and the emotions attached will be different from the viewer next to you. 

The film also presents its own form of social commentary, regardless of how unnecessary the storyline is. United States Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) resents Oppenheimer, believing he humiliated him amongst peers and during a private conversation with Albert Einstein himself. Strauss organizes a private hearing with a maddeningly premeditated outcome, and as Oppie’s cohorts warped recollections and his connections to the communist agenda paint him as a security risk, the board strips Oppenheimer of his security clearance in a shameful display of misguided loyalty. Jumping between timelines, perspectives, and guilty consciences, Strauss’ revenge campaign hindered heavily on one piece of information; Oppenheimer talking poorly of him to Einstein. Through Strauss’ perspective, Oppenheimer is malicious, self-content and sympathetic to the communist cause, further establishing his creation of the atomic bomb may have a second agenda in furthering communism. The audience finds out that Oppenheimer never spoke of Strauss to Einstein, the black and white perspective the audience absorbs as Oppenheimer’s reckoning was built on a lie. Nolan weaves this narrative as such in order to communicate the importance of forming your own opinion. Information overload is the name of the game, and for better or worse, Nolan crafts Oppenheimer in a way that individualizes the viewing experience. A victim, a hero, a monster, and a scientific labyrinth refuse to answer that for you, and allow that summation to be something different every time you watch it.